Alphabet Soup Blog

Last year I became a beta-tester for Astute Graphics’ Adobe Illustrator plugin “VectorScribe”. Those who know me know that I’m not really a very tech-savvy person. I get quite comfortable just sticking with doing things the way I usually do them. Over the years I’ve become very adept at using Illustrator, and was not overly excited at the thought of having to learn some new tools. I’d heard of Illustrator plugin tools, but I’d never really thought of using them before. So, to my surprise, I almost immediately embraced the new tools in VectorScribe. They work really well, ironing out a lot of the inherent flaws in Illustrator. I’d learned to live with a lot of those flaws, but once I learned I didn’t need to live with them anymore, those “flaws” started to look more and more like gaping wounds. VectorScribe is great—now I don’t know how I ever got along without it! You can download a little Case Study we did about VectorScribe here. I would definitely encourage all serious Adobe Illustrator users to at least try the 14 day free trial version. It will change your life!

So when the good folks at Astute Graphics asked me if I’d work on a little printed promo for them I thought “Well, why not? I really believe in their products”. The front and back covers of the piece were to be covered with testimonial quotes about their plugins from other users. The challenge was to make this list of quotes visually exciting. Most of my work is lettering-centric, but with this project the challenge was to only use set type and limited color—something a little different for me. I did use two of my own fonts, PowerStation (currently on sale) and DeLuxe Gothic: see if you can find them. Anyway, I think you can see that it’s possible to create a lot of visual fun by just using the basics, and combining them in imaginative ways. This is real Alphabet Soup!

When I originally did the title lettering for "Alex Steinweiss: The Inventor of the Modern Album Cover" I hadn't yet designed "Steinweiss Script". In fact it was designing this headline that spurred me to do that typeface design. In retrospect there were many interior headlines and other lines of copy for the book that Josh Baker, AD at Taschen, would have liked to have had set in a new Steinweiss Script font. But they had to settle for what was available at that time, which was one of several different digitized versions of what Alex Steinweiss had originally designed for Photo-Lettering.
Now Taschen has released their more moderately priced trade edition of this incredible book—and just in time for this release I was able to reset all their headlines and other copy the way we had originally wanted to—in Steinweiss Script:

Just having returned from vacation, I discovered that while I was incommunicado Alex Steinweiss—one of my heroes and the inspiration for my Steinweiss font—had passed away. So I'd just like to add my voice (belatedly) to the chorus who have recognized him as one of the giants of 20th century design, who has influenced countless people in the design and illustration fields, and brought delight to millions of others through his beautiful work. The world is indeed a lesser place without him. R.I.P. Mr. Steinweiss.

Another in my series of Alphabet Soup "Fonts In Use" this post highlights Steinweiss Script. I just heard from graphic designer Eric Baker who used the font in a design project for the graphic identity of Casa Cantil, a beautiful villa just a couple of hours outside of Mexico City. Here's his design in the context of a business card:
What strikes me is that in this context Steinweiss feels quite contemporary—not quite the "vintage" look that one might have expected from such a font. My intention was to create a font that would be kind of like a chameleon – in that it could feel appropriate in many different contexts. Here it seems perfect for the 1960s Mexicana feel I think Eric was going for.

If you've used an Alphabet Soup font in an interesting way, email me some images—I'd be happy to post them!

If you'd like to cozy up and get more familiar with Steinweiss before jumping into a serious relationship, read Steven Heller's recent Imprint article. Steinweiss Script also features prominently in the lovingly composed interview I just did for Creative Characters.

We're very proud to be able to finally announce the release on MyFonts of The Steinweiss Script Family. We've described these fonts briefly in the last two postings (scroll down) but, to reiterate, this family is made up of three weights—a Light, a Mediuim and a Bold. Within each of the three weights, through advanced OpenType features, a user has the ability to access three distinct variations: Simple, Fancy, and Titling. Rather than trying to describe them again, I've provided an image that demonstrates what they are:

I began designing this font with just the larger caps and taller ascenders/descenders, but in the end felt that giving user's these options would add usefulness to the font. These variations make Steinweiss Script accessible not just for headlines, but for applications where vertical space might be an issue, and also for longer passages of text.

To help users understand how to be able to access these features (and also to show off the font) I created "The Steinweiss Script User's Guide" in PDF form (1.2 MB download). I've also created an "Incomplete" character showing to give somewhat of an idea of what's in the font:

Steinweiss Script is available on MyFonts and FontShop either as a family of all three weights, or each of the weights can be licensed individually.

Head's up everybody! I've just set the release date for the Steinweiss Script Family for Tuesday, November 9th. It will be available only on MyFonts—at least initially. And I'll be running an introductory sale at a 20% discount. For a good preview of what's in the font and how it's OpenType features work you can download "The Steinweiss Script User's Guide" (about 1.2 MB).

Back in the summer of 2009 I was contacted by Josh Baker at Taschen Publishing about doing some work on the huge commemorative edition they were putting together on the work of Alex Steinweiss. For those of you who are not familiar with that name, Mr. Steinweiss is considered to be the inventor of the album cover as we have come to know it—as a kind of mini-poster with graphics relating to the musical content of the album. He produced hundreds of covers for 78 RPM albums between the late 1930s and the late 1940s. Of course I was thrilled to have anything to do with this project.
My assignment was to do some lettering for the cover and title page that was in the spirit of Mr. Steinweiss' very graphic calligraphy, which had become known as "The Steinweiss Scrawl". This "scrawl" had become ubiquitous and inextricably associated with his work. Here's an example of one of his album covers:

Steinweiss' calligraphic work was very spontaneous and kinetic, while the work of lettering artists tends to be more carefully studied and worked out. So it was a bit of a challenge to try to capture that spontaneity in my piece of digital art for Taschen's cover—as seen below:

While I was working on this, Josh and I had discussed the possibility of doing similar lettering for all the different chapter headings and headlines throughout the book (about 16 of them), but decided that it wasn't practical for budgetary reasons. The subject of creating a "scrawl" font was also discussed, but was nixed for the same reason—in addition there wouldn't have been enough time to do it: creating a font from scratch can be a very time-consuming process.

Around 1951 Alex Steinweiss had actually created a font called "Steinweiss Scrawl" for Photo-Lettering. (Coincidentally my first job after graduating Cooper Union was as Ed Benguiat's assistant at Photo-Lettering!). But this font was extremely limited in it's capabilities, and although it had a certain bouncy charm and naïveté, in my opinion, it didn't really capture the fluidity of Steinweiss' calligraphy:At any rate, shortly after completing the Steinweiss project for Taschen, I decided to pursue on my own the design of a font in the spirit of his calligraphy. The challenge was enormous—to create a typeface that retained the sense of hand-letting and fluidity within the context of a digital font. Where Steinweiss' scrawls were all slightly different from each other, shifting and changing according to the needs of a particular cover design, a font designer has to commit to specific forms that need to be set in stone, so to speak. In this particular font, the "managed" nature of the design had to appear to be "unmanaged"!

Part of my solution was to create the typeface with a ton of alternates, lowercase ligatures, and caps/lowerase ligatures. Creating this as an OpenType font would be the only way to wrangle these thousands of pieces together into a coherent typeface design. Luckily I was able to count on the expert programming help of Patrick Griffin of Canada Type. Also, I was fortunate enough to be able to contact the Steinweiss family through Taschen, and get the official Steinweiss approval for this font design.

At this point until the fonts are released (very soon!), for those interested in seeing more, you may download "The Steinweiss Script User's Guide" that I've just completed (about 1.2 MB).

In a nutshell, here's how the fonts are organized: "Steinweiss Script" is a family of fonts in three weights: "Steinweiss Script Light", "Steinweiss Script Medium", and "Steinweiss Script Bold". Additionally, within each weight there are three variations: Simple, Fancy, and Titling. These relate to the size/ratio of the caps to the lowercase, the complexity of those caps, and the size of the ascenders/descenders on the lowercase characters. The reason for all this is to add usefulness to the font, making it accessible not just for headlines, but for longer passages of text as well.

I am going to try to release these fonts within the next week or so. Please stay tuned for more information! I will announce here as soon as they go live.